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During the summer of 2016 I relocated from Seattle to Las Vegas. Since then, I have not put up new posts here on New To Seattle, although visitors are free to comment on older posts, to which I often respond. In Sin City I've launched a new blog, New To Las Vegas, which continues my same tradition of observation, musings and commentary. Visitors can access my new blog by clicking here. Please visit and stay awhile.

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Snow buries Seattle’s image, too

When Chicago gets socked in by snow, it’s big national news and people get worried. If New York receives a blast, it’s reported far and wide as a serious event that could harm an important economy. Even a frost in Florida gets insane coverage about what it might do to the orange juice supply and everyone’s health.

But when Seattle closed down for three days last week from an unusual combination of snow and freezing rain, a lot of the media world’s reaction was …

Now, the follow-up news that nearly 400,000 households and businesses, almost none of them in Seattle proper, lost electricity due to falling ice-laden tree branches, and many might stay that way for days, was treated with a little more respect. Why? As someone New To Seattle, my thinking is that number and duration sounded more world class, like some flood in Bangladesh. Either that, or distant journalists, especially in colder climates, could better relate to days in the dark than snowfalls that would not close schools in a lot of places, including my native New Jersey.

It’s possible that Seattle’s national reputation for not being able to handle its own weather goes way back to something that didn’t even happen in Seattle. I’m referring to the 1940 collapse from bad engineering and high winds of the newly opened Tacoma Narrows Bridge. (Click here to watch newsreel footage of Galloping Gertie’s spectacular fall.) That’s a good 25 miles south of town, but from afar seems next door, especially if you’re using a tiny map of the Seattle area while scarfing down a bagel in New York City. (As luck would have it, the replacement spans were closed last week for six hours from the same source–falling ice–that knocked out all that power, but at least the bridge stayed up.)